Veni, Vidi, Scripsi

I Find Your Lack of Server Transfers Disturbing…

With a game running… what is it, like 200+ servers? You don’t think with that spread somebody is going to end up finding out their friends are on another server?

Was this an oversight, a sign of extreme optimism, or a rookie mistake for BioWare on their first MMO?

Granted, it isn’t like every MMO does server transfers… or does them well. The last time I checked, to get a transfer in LOTRO you had to open a support ticket and wait a couple of weeks. And it was like that with SOE as well not so long ago, and $50 a pop on top of that.

But I thought a big title like SWTOR would have this covered. Ah well, history repeats.

Did Rift get the whole server transfer thing right early on? I know not much further after release than SWTOR is now they were offering up the whole free transfer thing to let people get on to more active servers.

(All the Juanita Weasel pictures you could ever want are here. And, of course, you can make your own with the blank here.)

Why are server transfers implied to be necessary? Even considering ‘friends on another server’ situations, a properly done MMO shouldn’t be violating its own concepts of world shards.
Well, that’s considering a properly done ‘MMO’. I’m clearly not defending SWTOR here.

@Ahtchu – Hrmm, that sounds like you are headed to the “no true Scotsman” argument. Any example I bring up will simply be dismissed as not properly done. So I will ask up front for an example of a properly done MMO.

I will say that in the past popular MMOs, even ones with reputations for server based communities like EverQuest, found it necessary to give players some way to move a character to a new server for whatever reason. And with in-rush and subsiding of players we have seen in every post-WoW launch, something that leaves some servers feeling dead, it would be something I would have high on my list of things to do if I were running something like 200 servers and the population wave had crested.

Rulez got there before me. I was somewhat surprised to read on Massively this week that TOR will be adding a /random command in its upcoming first major patch. On might have thought that it would have occurred to the team that spent several years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing an AAA MMO that at some point their players might like to roll the dice but apparently not.

I’m less surprised that server moves aren’t in from the start. You might hope as a developer that your players might stick with the game, the server and the characters on it for at least a couple of months, and it’s surely early enough to re-roll.

@ Wil
‘Properly done’ is largely metaphoric these days. The current trend is all about accessibility. Want to play with friends? Let me make that happen for you. What some shineys? Let me make that happen for you.

I liked how FFXI did it. You rolled somewhere, and you got all of a *single* relocation if you needed it. (I also, for what it’s worth, was a HUUUGE fan of 1 character per server/account). This meant that you sat down, thought about what you were going to do, and then did it. And the communities as a result? They would speak for themselves.

Couple expressions carrying all the take-away wisdom: ‘once, shame on you, twice shame on me’ and ‘once is an exception, twice is a trend’. Slipperly slopes, floodgates and all..

After the disasters of Age of Conan and Warhammer Online, I would think that =every= new MMO would have plans for server transfers and/or mandatory server merges ready to go by the end of the second month, just in case. Kudos to Trion for making them free, though. That way they act as a natural population balancing mechanism: Think your current server is too crowded? Leave. Think your current server is too empty? Leave (or recruit players from other servers).